Recent developments on thermal municipal sludge pretreatment technologies for enhanced anaerobic digestion

Gokce Kor-Bicakci and Cigdem Eskicioglu

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2019, vol. 110, issue C, 423-443

Abstract: Sludge management is still one of the most challenging issues in wastewater treatment plants due to a dramatic increase in sludge production, high sludge disposal costs, legal constraints as well as social and environmental concerns. There is a great effort to develop more environmentally friendly and economical technologies for minimization of excess sludge production and converting wastewater treatment sludge from waste into a renewable resource for bioenergy recovery. Recently, among these technologies, pretreatment processes applied before anaerobic sludge digestion have received a growing attention with several advantages over conventional digestion process. The main goal of the present paper is to present a state-of-the-art review of recent developments on advanced anaerobic digestion employed in municipal wastewater treatment plants. Thermal pretreatment technologies documented in the literature are presented extensively. The effectiveness of thermal pretreatment methods, namely conventional, microwave and radio frequency heatings, are discussed and compared in terms of heating principles, sludge disintegration, digester performance, and sludge rheology. The effectiveness and practicality of the aforementioned methods at industrial-scale and some challenges associated with the implementation at full-scale are also reviewed. Particular attention is paid to integration of combined heat and power systems with thermal hydrolysis for achieving energy self-sufficiency in full-scale plants. Furthermore, the municipal sludge production around the world as well as current sludge disposal and reuse options are addressed.

Keywords: Wastewater sludge; Anaerobic digestion; Enhanced hydrolysis; Thermal pretreatment; Bioenergy; Resource recovery; Full-scale applications (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032119303089
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:110:y:2019:i:c:p:423-443

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2019.05.002

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().